


Safflower

by sugarspuncoeurls



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Outdoor Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Semi-Public Sex, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:29:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26599090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarspuncoeurls/pseuds/sugarspuncoeurls
Summary: Not-quite-morning on the Azim Steppe, and the Lord of Doma is a very bad influence.
Relationships: Hien Rijin/Warrior of Light
Comments: 10
Kudos: 40





	Safflower

**Author's Note:**

> Didn’t participate in FFXIV Write 2020, but was nonetheless inspired by one of the listed prompts, particularly #8 (Lush). Be on the lookout for fluff, smut, a little kink, and whole lotta dawn imagery. Also, I broke the mold lol; no pre-relationship fic here. Expect that for next time.
> 
> Small note: "Benibana" is Japanese for safflower.

Her hand is in his hair. The sky is still gray with the light that precedes dawn, the moon a thin crescent growing fainter as the red convex of the sun sits, anticipatory, on the far horizon, waiting for the stars to fade.

He once compared that sight to her eyes by candlelight, drunk and feeling his mortality like a cold, keen prickle at the base of his spine. Now, the only chill is from the morning dew on the grass and the tips of her fingers where they rest on his chest and head, exposed to the air. He gently grasps and brings them to his lips, warming them with kisses and puffs of breath, his hold tightening around her waist.

It wakes her, as he thought – mayhap hoped – it might, and the lift of her eyelids, he thinks for one mesmerizing moment, will surely herald the day in place of the still-stationary sun, so easily substituted it would be by the glow her eyes emit. “False Sun” is what they used to call her, and almost guiltily – old scars were once fresh wounds, after all – he has to agree, so convincing the sight is to behold.

“Good morning, my morning,” Hien whispers, and grins when she focuses on him.

“Not yet,” Odzaya rasps, after a minute spent attuning to their surroundings. Her fingers in his hair twitch. “Why are you awake?”

“I am unsure, truth be told.” Unused to sleeping near a crowd, he would guess, as he takes in the sounds of deep breath, of murmurs and snores coming from the tents so close-by. Mayhaps Odzaya has surmised the same, as her hand moves in his own, her knuckles brushing his chin.

“You did not need to join us,” she says, her eyes on his, the red seeming to brighten with her heightened clarity. Mindful of his volume, Hien scoffs quietly.

“And miss such an experience? I think not.” He puts his lips back to her fingers in another kiss.

“A migration is not an experience,” she says, snorting softly. “It happens practically every season. Hardly worth noting, let alone joining.”

“Well, I disagree,” he replies. “It is a wonderful opportunity.” His grin returns, larger. “Where and when else am I going to learn how you were as a child?”

To her credit, his admission seems not to surprise her, if her flat expression is any indication. “Of course. Why else would Organa insist on inviting you along?” She attempts to pull her fingers from his grasp. Hien huffs a laugh, refusing; if anything, he answers it by tugging her altogether closer under their shared blanket of sheep’s wool.

“Well, _I_ was flattered for it.” And thoroughly amused, as he recalls the impish gleam in the Malaguld khatun’s eye as she beckoned him to her side, notably out of her adopted sister’s impressive hearing range.

“Of course you were,” Odzaya agrees matter-of-factly. “You know no better.”

“Oh?” he asks, and settles into their new position, their noses scarce ilms apart. Despite her seeming vexation and feeble attempt at distance, she fair burrows into his chest, their bodies a comfortably tangled hodgepodge of limbs. Her fingers, he notes, do not leave his hair, and he sighs in satisfaction. “Educate me, then.”

“She used you,” Odzaya bluntly obliges. “Held a carrot before your nose as surely as she would an inexperienced colt, and expected you to follow.” She smirks. “And you did, bringing with you an extra set of hands and free labor.”

“Ahh,” he replies, nodding sagely. “An effective ploy, then. The carrot, in this scenario, being my never-ending curiosity for all things _you_ , I presume.”

Odzaya snorts again, but her smile curls higher. “Ridiculous,” she says, in what he can only assume is confirmation, and shuffles a touch closer. Hien chuckles.

“So you’ve stated.” With a hum, he leans in and buries his nose into her neck, breathing deeply the scents of wildgrass and hair oils, clean wool and furs and the purest air. _Her_ scents, he corrects himself, never so concentrated as when she is here, returned to her home and her elements. “Gullible or no,” he begins in muffled declaration, “I can think of no better incentive than learning all I can about the woman I love; nor from no better source than those who raised her.” He breathes in again, his nose skimming over thin scale plates, brushing against long purple locs that trail like vines across their pillow. “The Steppe’s little safflower.” He smiles at the surprised hitch of her breath and lightly mouths at the jump of muscle near her throat. “My wondrous benibana.”

Odzaya says nothing, though he soon feels a deliberate tug on his hair, a clear demand for his attention. When he looks up, the sky is right behind her, its endless, brightening blue only serving to accentuate the deep red of her eyes and their rings of fire, the lush dark of her skin against her ivory scales. His own breath catches at the sight, before he finds it again to speak.

“No better,” he whispers, and brushes one more kiss over the fingertips he still holds before finally releasing them.

Odzaya merely watches him, unreadable but for the slightly elevated breath gusting past her wide, full lips. Then, curiously, she shifts and rises slightly, her gaze finding the other sleeping occupants of the Malaguld and Mol, a dozen crimson and plum tents packed together in a tight, defensive circle. Only they and a handful of others slept apart from the rest, as volunteers for the nightly watch, though these days, constant vigilance isn’t quite the necessity for survival it used to be. Because of that, no one seems astir just yet, neither among the main group nor those meant to be staying alert.

Odzaya resettles, her gaze back on his. He smiles. “All clear?”

“For now,” she confirms, her hand lifting and finding rest against his cheek. He shifts and presses his lips to her palm.

“Back to sleep, then? We yet have a few bells, I think.”

“Mm,” she hums, seemingly in agreement. Her thumb strokes along the length of his cheekbone, then dips down to the corner of his mouth. To his surprise, she presses in just slightly, her own mouth curling into a soft, humored smile.

“You are a terrible influence, you know,” she murmurs. Hien lifts an eyebrow.

“How so?"

“I joined the migration to ensure the tribe would reach their next settlement unscathed. I took the watch because I knew I was best for the task.” Her thumb presses slightly harder, and Hien resists the tempting urge to part his lips and take it in.

“And?”

To his surprise again, she huffs half a laugh. “And all I can think about is your ridiculous sentimentality.” Her thumb presses in again. “And your mouth on me.”

And just like that, his blood is at a simmer, heat suffusing his skin and turning their comfortable cocoon of glowing-ember warmth into a raging hearth. “Oh,” he says intelligently.

“Too obvious a carrot?” she asks, her smile simpering. Hien grins.

“Never.” And he surges those last ilms forward and claims her lips.

Odzaya sighs immediately, heavily as her sunrise gaze slides shut and her other hand joins the first. Together, they weave into the thick mane of his hair and take hold, tugging him into her until their bodies are molded together. She huffs in pleasure when he rolls atop her, pinning her to their bedroll, and undulates her hips through the fur layers between them, creating friction right where they need, her tongue licking the resulting groan from his mouth. She’s eager, and Hien revels in the urgency as he runs well-practiced fingers down her front, freeing the buttons and catches of her robe, pushing away material as he goes. He releases her mouth to suck kisses down her neck, her collar, graze his teeth along the edges where her skin meets scale. Odzaya lets out a hiss, her hands pulling strands again, her back arching, and he takes advantage of the leverage to push her robe open and from her shoulders, exposing her to the lightening sky and his gaze. He swallows hard, entranced by the gentle heave of her breasts, black nipples stark against the softened gray edges of the morning. Unable to resist, he leans in and laves one with his tongue, suckling as it pebbles against his lips. Odzaya hisses again, louder, almost a whine, almost his name, and he wonders for half a second if this is a good idea, after all. They’re farther away but still so close to the rest of the encampment, her family…

She tugs at his hair again, harder, and he moans against her chest, his thoughts flying from his head on yol’s wings and dissipating into the aether. Her other hand she has trailed down his back, underneath their blanket, the grip of her nails like brands through his clothing, to fumble with the ties holding his kimono closed. Sparing a thought to switch his attentions to her other breast, he shifts himself to his knees, one hand grounded near her shoulder as the other quickly undoes the knot of his obi. Odzaya barely waits for it to come undone before she’s pushing all the cloth she can reach away, and Hien shudders as the cool pre-dawn air hits his overheated skin. The sensation does not last; Odzaya ensures it, as she takes the first opportunity to steal her hand back between their bodies, stroking his hips and one buttock before sliding her palm over his muscled abdomen and pressing it, hard and flat, between his thighs.

“Kami…” he whispers, losing his hold on her breast as he lets loose a heavy-laden sigh. She palms him with purpose, right where he’s begun straining against the cotton of his fundoshi, and he momentarily allows himself to enjoy it, breathing in the scent of her skin as he swells with each firm pass of her hand.

“Calling to the gods already?” Odzaya breezily chuckles, her voice near his ear. He snickers back.

“I admit, you do make me prone to worship,” he replies, and brushes a kiss against the taut peak of a nipple. “All the more given where we are, beneath a sky clear enough to make them seem so close.” He licks a path between her breasts, stopping to press another heated kiss to her neck. “Will you condemn me?” he asks in a whisper.

Odzaya snorts. “Only if you forget yourself and call them down too earnestly.” Their eyes meet, and hers shimmer with amusement as she squeezes his growing bulge. “The gods will be the least of our problems if someone wakes.”

“Then let us be about it with all due haste,” he replies with a grin, and brings his mouth back to her breast.

All due haste, he says. And yet he cannot help but take his time and explore her at his leisure, find every corner and crevasse and expanse. As he peels away cloth and sucks his way down her sternum, his hands kneed her breasts, her shuddering ribs, her rolling hips, trace the ivory-paved pathways made by her scales. Blessedly, Odzaya seems not to mind, as she contents herself with burying her fingers back in his mane, making a mess of it as she sighs and whines and whimpers under her breath. When he reaches the apex of her thighs, she is already pushing herself up, urging him, and here, at least, he wastes no time, gripping the scant fabric covering her sex and eagerly tugging it down her legs, breathing the scent of her in only to lose his breath altogether as – _gods above_ – she’s revealed to his eyes, his mouth fair watering to see her glistening, lips dripping beneath the thin scale plate covering her mound.

A tug at his hair brings his gaze back up, past spread legs and a lithe, lean-muscled body to Odzaya’s dear, smirking face. “Worshiping again?” she japes, an eyebrow lifted as she questions his pause.

Hien’s answering smile, he knows, is utterly filthy.

“Preparing to.”

He takes his time again. Maddeningly, and not just for the lovely creature panting a storm somewhere above him. Presses his lips in a sweet kiss to the center of her folds, his hands massaging her trembling thighs, only to have to hold them open when he licks a languid path from her opening to the throbbing black pearl demanding his attention and she nearly boxes his ears while loosing a low, rasping moan. Her fingers rove through his hair in abandon, a series of pulls and pets, and he rewards the pleasurable sting of his scalp by swirling his tongue over her hood, adding the slightest suction to that swelling bead. Odzaya jerks, her hands giving another, powerful tug to his strands. “ _Gods_ , Hien…” she murmurs, and he chuckles.

“Who’s worshiping now?” he asks.

“Shut your mouth,” she responds immediately, laughingly. “Use it instead of talking.”

He meets her halfway, and silently slides a finger into her center. Curls it just enough to get her sighing again, then thrusts so that it breaks with a sharp exhale. The friction, he knows, is nowhere near enough; not with how soaked she is, how easily she took him in. He adds a second, and then a third, and then his mouth has returned, circling that pearl with his tongue before sucking it between his lips. Odzaya gasps, and this time there is a clear voice to it, a tone, an indicator that she’s being taken higher. His own climb is steady; he keeps shifting his hips, an attempt to lessen the strain on his fundoshi where it is practically strangling his erection. With every sigh, every moan, every roll of her body or pull at his scalp, he grows harder.

By the time she finally comes, in a heady rush of slick over his fingers and tongue, her voice a quiet but keening cry of what may be his name, he feels like a length of tempered Doman steel.

And yet still he waits, lapping up the remnants of her release, spurred by the lingering tremor of her legs and pulse-beat of her core, until another telling tug brings them level with one another. Hien grins at the dazed look on Odzaya’s face, the sun-glow of her eyes softened by their own post-coital, pre-morning fog. He presses his forehead to hers, rubbing against her scaled diadem.

“Evil man,” she breathlessly whispers. He laughs.

“Because I make you happy?” He kisses her, and she chases the lingering wetness on his lips, the taste of herself on his tongue.

“Because you make me greedy,” she answers, before her hand is traveling once more down the length of his body, caressing skin that feels too hot, too sensitive, as if his veins pump the lava that pours out of Hell’s Lid rather than blood.

“‘Tis not greed if I am more than willing to give,” he assures, eyes sliding shut, then screwing tightly as she strokes his length through the cotton cloth, breath leaving him in a rush of torturous sensation. “ _Fuck._ No carrots needed.” He looks down at the sudden sound of Odzaya’s quiet laughter.

“You are good for that,” she agrees. Her hand borders him, fingertips stealing between loosened folds to trail her nails down his skin and rub her thumb over his tip. His breath stutters, and her smile curls higher as she squeezes him. “Not so much a colt as a hung horse, maybe.”

Hien sputters an incredulous laugh, just as she kisses him again, effectively swallowing it in the tangle of their tongues. “You are magnificent,” he says, smiling brightly against her lips, in the short moments they part, and then she swallows that, too, along with his relieved groan when she finally frees him from his fundoshi, only to immediately encircle him with her fingers.

The blanket is gone, lost somewhere around their ankles. Hien cares not to think what would happen if someone were, like them, to wake too early, step outside or look too eastward to where they lie, utterly exposed to the open air and morning light. He cares not to think at all, not when Odzaya is so poised beneath him, guiding him further into the cradle of her thighs with the full, firm strokes of her hand. He hastens forward when he begins feeling the heat of her sex once more, utterly inviting, and they both moan aloud when the head of his cock first brushes her hood, velvet-soft and so full of promise.

“By the sunrise, Hien, _now_ ,” Odzaya whispers urgently, and he is too impatient to tease her again, to take his time. In the next instant, he is granting her wish with a surge of his hips and sheathing himself, and he has to bite his lip near clean-through to keep himself from shouting, so tightly, wetly, _perfectly_ does she envelop him. Odzaya’s head lolls back, her chest heaving with a pitched gasp, beautiful eyes sliding shut as she immediately rolls her hips, thigh muscles tensing as her heels lock together behind his back. “ _Yes_ ,” she hisses, and the look of bliss, of sheer need on her face is both almost enough to undo him and _more_ than enough for him to grip her legs in the burning brands of his palms and prompt another thrust.

“Od _zaya_ ,” he groans, and if he forces himself too deeply, clutches her thighs too tightly, or says her name too loudly, she cares not, preoccupied as she is with meeting him strike for strike, surge for surge, fingers gripping at his biceps, his shoulders, tangling back into his thick mane, her voice a siren’s song on the air’s current, urging him onward. His hands hold him up, buried half in the long grass and half in her long locs where they are strewn, and so he uses his mouth to find her breasts again, vibrates moans through his lips on her puckered nipples, bites at the edges of her scales until she’s whining again, so lowly in his ear. Her nails rake through his scalp, sharp sparks of pleasurable pain that burst behind his eyelids and contrast deliciously with the continuous burying of his cock into her cunt, wrapping him in lush warmth that swells in waves over and down his spine. Around them, dawn is slowly coming into being, the stars disappearing from the night’s canopy, the sky lightening into shades of pink and purple that he cannot help but note match her hair. Her body gleams with sweat and the morning dew, so pliant under his hips, and as he begins thrusting faster, harder, single-minded and near feral in his search for her high, Odzaya stretches, her back steadily arching, her eyes like thin crescents that glow beneath her lids. In the distance, the sun finally starts rising, its convex growing, rounding, once more becoming the center of their world’s universe.

Her eyes opening becomes the center of his, as the mounting heat and pressure, the heavy, heady slap of their skin curls her toes against his back, turns her fingers into claws in his hair. “ _Hie…_ ” she rasps, then again, louder, and gods, right when the sun becomes a bright, burning thing sitting on the horizon, ready to take flight into the sky, so does Odzaya as her eyes, wide and safflower-red, roll back in her head and she keens, high and trilling, a herald for the day. Her cunt becomes excruciating, blood-cuttingly tight around his shaft, and Hien struggles to keep his hips driving forward, suddenly so tempted to simply ride her climax right into his own.

But here, in the last moment, he chooses to take his time again, and builds the wave breaking through her until her back is arching right off the bedroll, until her fingers finally release his hair in favor of raking down and gripping his buttocks. She brings him to her mouth, buries one long moan under his tongue, and it is only when she pulls, urges him to bottom himself within her, to _take_ rather than give, that he answers it with his own, low and dark and primal as he snaps his hips in and out, near bruising in his force. Two, three, four times, then five, and finally, he brings himself, flush and molten-hot, against her, and releases everything with a shout that, even locked between them, still manages to echo into the sky.

What announces the official beginning of the day is them, naked and spent and covered in their exertions. The only sound Hien hears beyond the ever-present breeze and the distant cry of beasts is Odzaya humming tunelessly as she smooths back his hair, soothes the rends she has made down his spine. Her legs drop, almost reluctantly, back to the ground, and he strokes the trembling muscle as he pulls out from between her thighs only to bury his face between her neck and shoulder, blissfully content as he remains lying partially atop her, a hyur blanket to replace the auri-made one they have not the energy to fetch. “Can I say it now?” he asks, his voice reduced to a low crackle of its former life.

“Mm,” she intones, barely questioning, though he can tell it is. He chuckles.

“Good morning. I do believe it counts now, in more ways than one.”

Odzaya hums again. “Does it?” And the lazy jest in her tone makes him wish for the energy to make her scream again. He settles for making her sigh as he peppers kisses across her skin, easing love bites and the imprint of his palms on her legs. Trails his fingers tenderly over her mound where she is still so warm, still quivering, and smiles when she lets out a shuddering, telling breath.

“What do you think?” he asks, only to momentarily freeze as he registers what distantly sounds like a flutter of tent flaps. Odzaya hears it, too, and the two of them wait, tensed, breaths held, for what may be the inevitable, until a long, subsequent silence allows them to relax. Odzaya huffs shortly after.

“Ridiculous,” she says, carelessly closing her eyes and settling decisively against his chest. Emphasizes the act with a hand tangling right back into his hair, just because she can, and she looks and feels beautiful in her element, bare and utterly carefree. Hien smiles, more than a touch enchanted, his lips and then his cheek finding her forehead as he wraps her in his arms and his own eyes slide shut.

She is not wrong, after all. An interesting morning, it certainly has been. An interesting, perhaps ridiculous, absolutely glorious morning.


End file.
